Creating your 4HWW business and living a nomadic lifestyle

Thanks to our partner Pioneer Transcription Services for making this transcript possible!

David

Hello everybody, here we are back again with yet another 4HWW Success Story. This time it’s Michelle Dale. Michelle is from the UK and she’s a digital nomad who is also inspired by Tim Ferriss and The 4-Hour Workweek book. She’s the creator of a six-figure virtual assistant business which is called Virtual Miss Friday. And I’m looking forward very much to talking about two main subjects today which is on the one side how Michelle created her business from scratch basically and which is now her income source for her nomadic lifestyle, which is the second topic today. Welcome to the show, Michelle, and I’m very happy we could make it for the interview now.

Michelle

Yes, David, thank you so much. It’s such a pleasure and a real honor actually, because I’ve been checking out your website. And I happened to notice that it’s sort of male dominated so far. I think I’m the third female 4-Hour Success Story. I’m greatly honored.

David

I hadn’t actually noticed that, so that’s also interesting for me. Even better reason to finally have a female 4-Hour Workweek Success Story here on our side. So the introduction was just very short, but maybe throughout the interview we can dig a little bit deeper into who is Michelle Dale. How I want to kick off the conversation is with the usual question of how were you basically inspired by the 4-Hour Workweek? What’s your connection to the book?

Michelle

Well, it’s very interesting actually because I was sort of trying to do 4-Hour Workweek before I even knew it existed really. It was back in 2005 when I started to rethink my life and think that the 9-5, as it’s called, was really not for me. And I did a bit of soul searching, and I thought to myself then that maybe travel would be a good way for me to kind of go out and find myself, what I really wanted to do. I was in a job, it was a very good job, I suppose, or a lot of people would consider it to be a good job. But, again, the commute was more than an hour a day. I was in mortgages and loans and banking, and so it was all figures and commission and sales. And at that time the financial market was on a downer. So life was becoming pretty hard. I had a $250,000 mortgage and I was just like, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

So I literally made a decision to sell everything, my home, my properties, right down to my socks. And so I got rid of everything and then I basically packed a bag and went to Egypt, not really knowing where it was going to take me. It was at that time that I started to look into virtual assistants and other ways of making money online. But the problem was with the making money online thing. I was not like one of these outgoing kind of bloggy-type people who could just go and work with affiliates and set up a blog and sell products. And it seemed too difficult to me. So that’s when I started getting into the field of virtual assistants.

Then one day one of my clients happened to say to me—this was a couple of years later after I was traveling and I had started my business—about the 4-Hour Workweek. And he said he had read it, and he was a business coach. So he said, “Oh, you should really read this book. It’s very interesting.”

So I got the book and I read it, and there was a section in there that really hit home for me, and that was about the 80/20 Rule in a business. Once I quit my job back in 2005, I haven’t had another job since. And my business was kind of ticking over with me myself, and I didn’t really need a great deal. I liked this whole new rich idea that you get money through experiences and through life and through travel and doing things that you love.

At that point things really started to change for me, because I completely implemented the 80/20 rule in terms of the new clients I was bringing in. And it really, really worked for me. So that was the massive take away from that book .

But also I found it very interesting in the book about virtual assistants because he happily touches on the virtual assistant side of things. And at that point, I thought to myself as a VA, “Oh, this is what people are reading. This is what people are thinking about virtual assistants.” This is a great insight into the mind of a potential client, the things that they find good about virtual assistants, the things that they don’t like about virtual assistants or have difficulties with.” So the book also provided me, if you spin it on its head as a service provider, it provided me a huge insight into what my clients were thinking. A lot of people contacted me off the back of that book, like, “Oh, I read the 4-Hour Workweek. I’m looking for a virtual assistant now.”

So it was interesting. It was an interesting angle for me to come in and start using that. Because really I didn’t think of it from a point of, well, I could do the 4-Hour Workweek and be doing the Samba every weekend or rock climbing. But I thought to myself I could really apply these business strategies and this business acumen in my own business as a virtual assistant. And that was when it kind of escalated and evolved and I went into consulting and I would have a VA team. So it’s been a heavy influence for me.

David

So basically you had created already your VA company before you read the book, right?

Michelle

Yeah. I created the VA company… well, I started looking into becoming a VA in 2005 when I left the UK. And it wasn’t until 2008 I discovered the 4-Hour Workweek. And it was almost like reassuring, because I knew that what I was trying to achieve and what I had been doing which was really so alien to everybody—they were like, “What are you doing? Come back and get a job. Come home. Let’s stop this extended holiday.”But I didn’t want to stop my extended holiday. I wanted to carry on. I wanted to do my own business. I wanted to make money.

But there came a point a little bit later on when I met my husband while I was traveling and had children. And it was at that point I was like “I love my business. I love what I do, but I need to break away a little bit more”. I needed to somehow turn this into more of a passive income business as well, so I could spend more time with my family and just do the things I love to do. And work is one of them, my business is one of them, but I also wanted to really crank up my income as a virtual assistant in order to be able to kind of have more of the 4-Hour Workweek kind of lifestyle.

David

It’s always a big discussion when people talk about 4-Hour Workweek. Most of the time when we talk about it, people tell you, “Oh, you’re just a lazy person.” What’s your own personal definition of a ’4-Hour Workweek’? Because, obviously, not everybody understands it in a literal way of working only four hours, but it’s a whole philosophy behind that expression. What’s your definition of a ’4-Hour Workweek’, and according to your definition, are you living the 4-Hour Workweek, your own 4-Hour Workweek?

Michelle

In terms of the definition, I’m kind of like a black and white kind of person, so I would say that when I picked up that book and I saw “4-Hour Workweek,” I thought to myself, “This guy’s working four hours a week.” And from the content of the book, you would think that you would take it literally that maybe he really is working four hours a week. But it didn’t seem realistic in terms of being able to fit in every kind of business model.

But it’s interesting, because at the end of 2010, I started to go into VA training. And because I really wanted to do the VA training, I wanted to help and teach people who to replicate what I was doing which was pretty unusual, but everyone was very interested in it. That’s when I was like: “Okay, I have to take a step back out of my services business in order to be able to provide that.” So it was at that point that I did some rather extreme strategies and I took a few risks in my business, but it paid off.

So now, in terms of the 4-Hour Workweek myself, not in the literal sense, I work more than four hours a week. But maybe from my own personal point of view, I’m doing better than the 4-Hour Workweek. Maybe I’m not working any hours of the week, because it’s my life. I love what I do. My business is very much a part of my life and a part of my family as well, certainly in terms of doing the blogging side of things which I’m doing now. The business is part of my love of travel, and I love technology. I love the whole digital aspect of being able to work online and have this kind of freedom which I know doesn’t really exist in the real world, in my old real world. So, yeah, I’m living the 4-Hour Workweek for myself in terms of the fact that I do what I like, I go where I want, and I have a limitless earning potential. So, yeah, why not?

David

Sounds very good. Let’s jump right into the first topic then which in this case is your virtual assistant business, Virtual Miss Friday. We’ll not talk too much about virtual assistant services per se, because I think it’s a widely known subject. But everyone can check out your website www.virtualmissfriday.com. And I like the slogan: “It’s not only Robinson Caruso who has everything done by Friday.” It’s a very nice tagline. So we’ll talk more about how you use that business, never mind now the fact that you didn’t start it after reading the book but already before. We’ll talk about how you’re using that as your income muse and how to live the 4-Hour Workweek lifestyle according to your personal definition.

So when you read the book in 2008, you said you were already working on your business for what, two to three years, right?

Michelle

Not necessarily. I mean I started the business when I started researching VAs in 2005 which is when I left to go traveling. And at that point, I spent roughly around two years until around 2007. I was trying to develop the skills that I needed to be able to work online. Because coming from a financial background, I thought to myself that I could help people with their mortgages online. But I wanted to get out of that. I didn’t want to take that with me in my new life. So I started to learn Dreamweaver, Photoshop, all these different systems, HTML. I wanted to offer a more different kind of service. But I didn’t have the skills, so it took me about two years of hardcore, 14 hours a day, learning Adobe for me to actually get to the point where I was building my own websites and doing my own stuff.

And also during that time I was freelancing. I had a couple of clients who were connections from England, and I was just kind of like saying to people, “I want to learn how to do this. I’ll do it for free. I’ll do it for a very low cost.” I was living in Egypt at the time and it was easy to do that, because you can live there for a fraction of the cost you can live anywhere else. So I did freelancing for a couple of years, and it was great. It kind of kept me ticking over, and it gave me the ability to learn a lot of new things. But it wasn’t until 2007 that I officially had a company. And when my company started, it was because I met my husband and I got pregnant. So when the company started, me and my husband sat down and we were like, “This is it. We’ve got to make this work.” So that’s what I did.

Yeah, 2007 was when I officially launched and 2008 was the time I read 4-Hour Workweek. Within the first two years, I was earning six figures, but it didn’t really come until after the first year. Although I was hiring people within four months of doing my big official business launch.

David

So you mentioned before that the 80/20 Rule really clicked with you. Do I suppose correctly that this is still the most important rule for you when it comes to your own business now, the Virtual Miss Friday, or your blog?

Michelle

Yeah, absolutely. The thing is I think about with business, and the thing that the book really teaches you is that anything is possible, and you make things happen, and you do things. So with regards to the business, it went into six figures when I was doing all of the work myself and doing a lot of the interaction with clients. But later on at the end of 2009/2010, that’s when I decided to start stepping a little bit away from the billable time, away from the services. And in terms of taking it to a multi six-figure business, it’s very difficult to do that on your own. So I started hiring team members. I got managers, department managers. So now I take more of a direct one-on-one role with certain clients in terms of my consulting business. But a lot of the work now is done by my team, and basically that’s how you get bigger and you grow and you start to earn passive income from the amount of money that your team or the time that your team is working as well. So if you’ve only got 14 hours in a week, and you’ve got three people who have all got 14 hours in a week, then you can earn a lot more money.

David

Definitely. And you mentioned something important before that you put in basically 14 work hours first before you could even dream of having something like a four-hour workweek, right?

Michelle

Yeah.

David: Here is a topic that comes up again and again which I think people have a misunderstanding about, that they sit down and suddenly they would have a four-hour work week. It’s obviously not the case, and first of all you have to be prepared to work 10, 12, 14 hours per day in order to get started toward the 4-Hour Workweek.

Michelle

A lot of the time with entrepreneurs, they have to go through this learning experience. I mean if you come out of a job where you’re doing a 9-5 and then you all of a sudden want to become an entrepreneur and have your own business online, I think that there’s too much stuff online that makes people think that they can just go and do that and within 24 hours they’ll start making $100 a day off of a website. You need to put the initial time in, and I needed to put the initial time in, because I basically had to cram in a hell of a lot of learning, which some people spend like maybe five years going through that. But for me, it happened fairly quickly, only because of the amount of time I put in and the amount of things I had to learn in order to make it work. Because when you’re working online, which I had never done before, I literally only discovered the Internet a couple of years before I was doing this. So even the Internet was still very new to me at that time. And even then, when I first discovered the Internet, it was like I put a CD in the computer and it was AOL and then it just popped up with a chat box, and I thought that was the Internet.

So I had to kind of evolve from that a little bit into other things. And when you start working online, particularly as a service provider, you have to take into consideration that you need to have technology. You need to know what systems you’re going to be working in. You need to have excellent communication skills in order to be able to translate what you mean online and to work online and to understand people online. It took a lot of powerful work, but it’s just experience. You can fast track experience by working harder.

David

What is interesting is: you said that in the beginning you were in a mortgage business and all that stuff and in a very good position. I’m not sure if you had fun with that position or not [Michelle shakes her head and smiles], but then you decide to quit and go into the virtual assistant business. I mean there are lots of people out there who are in a similar position thinking, “Oh, come on. I just don’t love my job. I would like to do something else. I would like to do something on my own.” How did you end up with virtual assistant services, and what is your conclusion for others trying to find their own passion?

Michelle

Well, it’s interesting really, because I thought to myself because I was in a very salesy position before, when you have to sell—well it was selling money really. I was selling money, selling loans and things like that. I really didn’t want to do anything where I had to sell anymore. But I really wanted to sort of turn it around and to try and help people. But at the time, I came across virtual assistants. I had to do a lot of research, especially when I first got to Egypt. I had very little funds, so I had to do a lot of research into the possibilities of the things that I could do that would potentially bring in some immediate income for me. And it didn’t have to be that much, because I was living in a Third World country at the time. So I was just thinking to myself, “What could I do that’s potentially going to bring in some more immediate income for me now?”

In 2005, things were very different on the Internet than these days. We didn’t have these amazing things and products that pop out of nowhere and things that you could buy and just click a button and it’s all automated. So I started looking into things like developing products, doing the affiliate kind of stuff. I was really looking into the options of what people could do in making money online, but none of them seemed very immediate to me, despite the fact that there were a few sales pages that promised riches if you did this, that, and the other. It didn’t seem real. I don’t know, I just didn’t buy it. And I thought to myself, “Well, if you’re dealing with people, if you’re dealing with humans and human interaction, if you’re good with people, there must be a way to translate that online and to basically help people online with their business needs.” And because I came out with this sort of banking admin, I had PA roles in the past as well and office manager roles and things like that. It was kind of a natural progression for meto kind of take those skills—my own personal skills and things that I love to do like organization. I’m very methodical and very logical. I can look at people’s businesses or I can look at things online and I can move them around and shape them into something better. So, for me, going down the services route seemed like a better option.

But at that stage, I never considered really—it was actually probably around the 4-Hour Workweek that I really considered the potential of being able to hire larger numbers of people and not be so anal about holding on to everything. Because it took me a long time to let go. Although I was hiring people to help me in my business, I was still pretty much being the bottleneck of everything, the bottleneck of the business. And I wanted to really get away from that, so I had to start letting go, and I had to start learning more how to delegate and how to put procedures in place to make sure that other people were able to replicate the things that I was doing. And that’s when I started to get more into the whole team-building aspect. And as soon as you start utilizing very good people in your business, no matter what business it is, but particularly in the services business where technically you’re selling your time in exchange for something, a service, a website, administration, that type of thing.

You just have to learn really the systems, how you’re going to work it, and you have to be very methodical about the way you strategize your business. And that sort of came later on for me, because I needed the experience.

But now, fortunately, there’s a very healthy balance in my life and my business, a lot to do with the amount of energy and time I put in over the years, a lot to do with my own mindset of letting go a little bit. Sometimes it’s very difficult to do that when you have a family to take care of and a lifestyle to maintain, I suppose. We never wanted to stop traveling. So you really have to just go for it and sit down and think about the different ways that you can make more money without doing more yourself. And the services industry is a very good way to do that. It’s an impeccable way to do that.

David

Would you start out with a services business again, or would you really reconsider and maybe do something like digital products that is really created once and, hopefully, you sell it several millions of times?

Michelle

I would always, always do a service business. I dabbled in products. I’ve had clients who have sold products online or started with us to try and develop a product-based business or a product-based website, and it’s tough. To sell a product, say you have an eBook or something like that which is $20, how many frickin’ eBooks do you have to sell in order to make $25,000-$30,000 a month? It’s a lot of eBooks.

David

Except if you know how to do it and you’re like this Mike Geary from one of Tim Ferriss’ latest Success Stories. I’m not sure if you have read it, making millions of dollars in eBooks.

Michelle

Yeah, yeah, oh, God, it’s possible, but it’s not possible for me. You need list building. You need influential people around in terms of affiliates. You can get lucky and you can find an affiliate or maybe two or three affiliates with massive lists you want and you can do all the hype and all the stuff like that. But, to me, that’s hard work. I mean, to develop a campaign for a product, to create that product, to develop the campaign, to build up the trust, to get the testimonials, it seems too slow for me. Whereas, with a service business, you can start right away. You can start earning money from day one.

So, to me, yeah, I would always do a service business. But a lot of that as well is because I love it. I like the idea of passive income. I’ve created products myself based on my own experience. I’ve got a training program now, a business program, which teaches people step by step my own business model. That’s what I did with Virtual Miss Friday, obviously, in the later stages when I turned it into a six-figure business. And I sell that and it sells well, and I’m very happy with that product. And I have a membership site which I’m working on now which is going very well for me called the VA Passport.

So I’ve got my hand in these little things, but it’s more off the back of my own business which I’m creating these products now. But the problem with products and the problem with selling things like eBooks and things like that or any kind of product, I think it’s a pain if you’re doing it as an affiliate, but I would feel really iffy selling something that I didn’t really know anything about or had the knowledge of myself. So I tend to like to create products or sell products or affiliate with people where I have some sort of a knowledge of what’s going on. I don’t like the idea of not really understanding or knowing the stuff that I’m selling or the products I’m getting into. But the fortunate thing is, I’ve worked with many, many clients, a lot of clients in different industries and different businesses, and I would miss also that aspect, and the continuous learning aspect of being in the service industry and working with so many awesome people and clients. I’d do services any day.

David

One thought that just came up is that I would assume most of the listeners are in the stage where they have a job but they want to get out somehow, want to create something, some sort of a 4-Hour Workweek muse. But most of us have difficulty seeing the big picture of what is possible in the future. And you just mentioned before that it’s kind of all in the mind where it starts. If you look back at the time where you started – before the 4-Hour Workweek – and look at yourself now, what conclusions do you draw which might also be of interest for people who are in that position that you were in and don’t maybe dare to make the leap?

Michelle

Oh, it’s interesting. If somebody had told me back in 2005 that five years later I’d be working online, still traveling with a multi six-figure online business where you’re basically all operates from a computer, I’d be like: “No frickin’ way.”

But you never know what’s going to happen. You never know how your life will change, how your life will evolve. And most of the time, the things that have happened to me have more been circumstantial, and you can never predict anything like that. The problem is that society and the trends in society make us think a certain way. A lot of people thought I was absolutely mad to sell my house and to just pack my bag and go to a country which is Egypt. It’s like, “Why Egypt?” But why not? So I think you’ve got to just not think about it too much. At the age of 18 I owned a house. I was very much always looking to the future. Always planning, always trying to think of how my life was going to be when I was 30, 40, 50. And I’m 30 now, and my life is completely different than how I thought it was going to be. So all that planning and thinking really did me no good. Because it turned out completely different than how I imagined.

You have to take risks. You have to step out of your comfort zone, and sometimes if you have a dream, if you have a vision, you have to just go for it and just try it. Otherwise you could be sitting there thinking, planning for it 10 or 20 years down the line. I was very fortunate, because I left when I was only 23. I spent my 24^th birthday in Egypt, and I guess at that age I was a little bit more young and foolish really than most people. But it worked out and I had a lot of faith in myself. I knew I had a very heavy motivator for it, and I think what motivates even drives you. It’s very big. You need something awesome and amazing to look forward to in order to be able to take that decision to do the 4-Hour Workweek lifestyle. And provided you’ve got something driving you, behind you, I think you’ll be fine.

The fear of having to go back to Englandand having to go back to my old life and my job and the commuting, it really pushed me and drove me to become successful in my business. To do enough and then more, to not have to live out my fears and go back. And it happened and it’s been great.

David

I like it very much because I think in most cases, when fear sets in, they get paralyzed by fear and don’t do anything. But you’re the opposite. You said fear kind of actually drove you, inspired you because you were afraid of going back to England and maybe even go back to your old job that you didn’t like, obviously. It’s all in the mind, you can let fear paralyze you or you can let fear drive you. And I think it’s pretty much your own decision how you use fear, if you use it as a paralyze or as a motivator.

Michelle

But if it paralyzes you, it will hinder you and it will stop you from letting yourself go and seeing what you’re capable of, seeing what you’re capable of achieving, because you’ll always be holding back. Even if you start taking those little baby steps towards doing something, fear will always hold you back. But often fear is just a fantasy. We make up all these crazy things in our head, all the potential things that could happen. And nothing is ever really that bad. So what if you disappear off to another country and it doesn’t work out? You can go back. So what if you quit your job and it doesn’t work out? You’ll find another job. But if you don’t try, you’ll never know.

David

Very interesting and very inspiring, especially how you’re dealing with fear. Now, going to back to 2012, you are the owner of a multi six-figure business, successful entrepreneur doing training, doing blogging successfully, etc. And you’re using as we said in the beginning your businesses to live a nomadic lifestyle, although you’re married and have two children aged three and four. So basically, your children are growing up with this nomadic lifestyle. I suppose you don’t see any problems with that, but people that see that might talk, etc. So what’s basically the biggest issues that you’re facing with that kind of lifestyle? Having in mind people who are maybe in a similar position, who have maybe a 4-Hour Workweek or a muse and they would go into more nomadic lifestyle living, but they are fighting fear because they might marry, have children, etc.

Michelle

Yeah, it’s interesting really, because a lot of people—I didn’t kind of sort of introduce my family into the business or talk about it. I kept it very ‘businessy’. And a lot of people just thought in my business I was living in England, because I was virtual and people just always used to naturally assume that I was living in England. And then I was talking to a client one day, and he was like, “Do you think you could drive to me, up to London, to have a meeting?” And I was like, “No, I’m in France,” because I was living in France at the time. And that’s when it started—that’s when my clients started to realize that I was nomadic. And they were like weird. “So you have kids?” And I was like, “Yeah.” And so that’s when I realized that people were starting to become interested in this thing of having a family and how it’s possible to travel with children and to live this kind of lifestyle.

It’s a lot easier when they’re younger, because obviously when they’re babies—our entire life we don’t have stuff in our lives. We have a car which is a very beat up, old Honda Shuttle which is seven-seater a car. And all our possessions fit in that car, including us and our children. So we travel very, very light. We’ve been doing Europe, because we were a little bit concerned I suppose about taking the kids around the Middle East, although we’re going to be going back there soon, after we’ve done Crete. I think we’ll be going back there at least to visit for a while and maybe spend a few months. But my son is getting to the age now where we fully appreciates he needs friends and things and he needs to have a school, and a more kind of social environment.

So it’s fine when they’re young. You can travel around. You put them in the car, you put their stuff in the car and drive around with them. As they get older to school age, you can home school, but we wanted to put them in a proper school. But it doesn’t have to be in England or America. My husband’s from America. So we’re going to actually see if we can get him into a little school. We’re in Italy at the moment, so they’re not in school now. My son literally only just turned four and my daughter is still two. She’ll be three in a few weeks, so they’re still very young, but when we get to Greece, we’re going to see if we can get them into a little Greek school and maybe get them talking Greek so they can translate for us.

David

Well, they say that the young age is very good for learning languages. And you said that for your son it will be the fifth country where he’s lived, right? Okay, the first years, he didn’t really realize it, but it’s the fifth country for him now.

Michelle

Yeah, he’s four years old and we’ve lived in four countries, so he’s well traveled. I never even went on a plane until I was 17.

David

And Greece will be his fifth country. So do you have any suggestions about this nomadic lifestyle when it comes to children and when people are in this phase where they say, “I have this business. I am on the good way of outsourcing it or I have this location independent business, but I just don’t see myself every year maybe somewhere else, because of the children”?

Michelle

I think it all depends really on the attitude towards your children. I mean at the end of the day, my children are coming on to three and four, so I’ve not kind of been thinking about their Harvard education at the moment or what university they’re going to. For me, the most important thing is my growing up my children to see the world from a different angle and a different viewpoint than I did.

Living in England and growing up in England, I was very fortunate. England is a lovely country. I love my people, but it’s very fixed. And the people sometimes can be a little bit fixed, too, and we have these ideas of how we should live our lives. And it’s like chronological order, certain things happen at certain times in a child’s life or people’s lives, and you have to kind of step outside of the box and not think that way anymore. My children have done so many things and seen so many things that other children would never get the opportunity to see. And, for me, that experience is invaluable really, especially at such a young age. And I would like my children to know that there are different cultures out there and that there are different people. There are different standards of living. And I hope that it will really open their eyes and their minds as they’re growing up.

And I don’t think about the future very much, to be honest with you. It’s like I said before. I was constantly thinking about the future and what’s going to happen in three years, five years, 10 years down the line, but you don’t know. We take our lives each day as it comes, and do always what we feel is best for us as a family. So if you are a family, if you have children, it’s not so bad if your children have a little bit of an unconventional life. If they go to different schools, meet different children, or have to learn in different languages.

I think when a child gets to the age of six, or I’ve heard this around, when a child gets to the age of six, it’s more difficult in terms of schooling to pick up a language and things like that. But this is kind of why we’re going to Greece this year. My husband and I really love Egypt. We met in Egypt. It’s a peaceful country. It’s where we felt most at home, but we can’t really go back there with the children. I suppose because of the concerns we have about raising our children in Egypt, but we figured that Greece is very close and it’s still in EU. And so we’re just kind of feeling our way around Europe at the moment and seeing if we can get as close to Egypt as we possibly can, and Crete seemed like a good thing. I’ve got my ‘Rough Guide to Crete’ here as well already.

Because of the way we live our lives, I actually live in holiday accommodation. I have done so since 2005. So I basically go on holiday accommodation websites and I negotiate longer term rentals, so we don’t have to get involved in the contractual things of normal rentals. So we just kind of drift around in holiday homes and hope for the best. But we’re going to Crete for a year. We’re going to see how it goes. Who knows? We might stay a bit longer if the kids like it.

David

Okay, so for everybody who happens to be around Crete for summer vacation can arrange a meeting with you, or coffee, right?

Michelle

Absolutely! Yes, absolutely. It’s interesting, because I always say wherever I go, if you happen to be here, look me up.

David

It’s a good vacation destination definitely and for sure also a good place to live for a year. So you change location every year basically, right?

Michelle

Yeah, we’ve been here less than year. We’re in Italy now, so we came to Italy in August, and we’ll be leaving in April, so it’s seven or eight months.

David

And for you to be able to live that nomadic lifestyle, of course, Italy and Greece are not the cheapest places to be. We said your company is a multi six-figure business, so you can afford to go to those places. But on the other side, you need to have time. You’re a successful entrepreneur. You have your own business running. You’re the manager of that business, so how do you exactly make sure that wherever you are you can really enjoy also the time there and not having to work those 24 hours a day and neglecting your family?

Michelle

It’s an interesting question because a lot of people would think that this kind of lifestyle must be very difficult to maintain, but really it’s not. I mean, yes, you have to earn a decent amount of money if you want to do this, especially living in holiday accommodation. Because everyone’s like, “God, you’ve got holiday accommodation for a year? It’s going to cost you a fortune.” And it does, but at least you get things like housekeepers and stuff which is nice. But, yeah, I had to build the business up to a certain level in order to be able to do this kind of travel. And like I say, we don’t have any stuff, so moving around is fairly inexpensive for us. We just get in the car and go basically.

But in terms of the business, I do have an international business corporation which means I don’t have to re-register businesses every time I go to another country. So I have an international business corporation which is only like an offshore company, so that kind of keeps all my businessy stuff and the paperwork stuff with my accountant.And that side of the business is dealt with by somebody else. I like paying people who like to do their thing. And then in terms of my own business, it’s all run online, so I have gotten my Mac, my little Macbook Air, and I have an iMac as well. So basically I set my office up wherever I can find a space in wherever we’re living, and I spend most of my top on the laptop or the iPad or something like that.

Because of the way the business is, I do the consulting. I do a lot of planning, a lot of organization. I do oversee all the teams, but I have managers. So the way I’ve done it is I’ve got the capacity to take on a lot of clients and business at personal level with me sort of working directly with the clients. But there’s a lot of things going on in the background. I have a lot of support from my team. And that’s really the secret or the key to being able to do this and the earn the clients’ income. It’s just having the other people around who will actually support you and help you.

I have three main departments in my business. It’s broken down into three sections. The administrative side of the company and the technical, creative, design side of the company, and the SEO side of the company. So we’re a complete online business service. And because we’ve got these three sections, I need three managers. And my managers are completely amazing the way they work with me, the way they work with the team, and directly with the clients.

It’s actually the business model and the strategy behind my business model which has given me the ability to be able to step back and spend every day with my children. I do like working the evenings. It’s easier for me to do that, so I can choose when I would like to work. And my husband is one of the managers of the departments, so he’s with me as well. We kind of share responsibilities with the kids and life. And the more the business grows, the bigger it becomes, the easier life gets. And the more technology is helping us, the more we’re able to find good staff, the better things become, it gives me more ability to really think more about the strategy behind my business and how I’m delegating really.

David

So basically you’re doing what everybody suggests who knows about entrepreneurship which is work on your business instead of in your business.

Michelle

Yes, that’s absolutely what I do. I focus primarily on one-on-one consulting with my clients, because it’s very profitable. My VA services bring in a certain amount of money. The consulting side of what I do brings in another chunk of money. So having that consulting side of the business has been good for me. I can leave the VA services. I can be the brains behind it, and then when I put a strategy in place for a client or I’m working on a client’s business, and I say to a client, “All right, this is what we need to do, blah, blah, blah, blah,” I can then delegate that out to my team, and I know it’s going to be done right. And I know that they’re all going to work together. And I know it’s all going to turn out okay. And that’s the biggest thing about our business is letting go and letting other people do the work for you or with you. But that’s kind of the place I’m at, at the moment.

So I do the consulting and then the majority of the rest of the time, I’m working with the other people in my coaching side of things in my VA programs on my membership site and working on the various sale fronts that I want to do basically because I want to. It’s fun. And I think you need to have other projects. You need to have other interests as well. And I’m also working continuously on development and new clients and refining my clients as well and working more with the people that I want to work with and love to work with.

So it’s a great place to be. And in terms of being an entrepreneur, in terms of having a business, it’s a great place to be. I know entrepreneurs who have got factories and shops and things like that, and it doesn’t provide that same level of flexibility, that same level of freedom that you can have by working online and doing this type of thing. So I’m so lucky, very lucky.

David

Okay, that sounds very good. Although it’s a classic question, but nonetheless very important: Looking back is there anything that you’d definitely say, “Don’t do that,” when it comes to trying to fulfill your 4-Hour Workweek?

Michelle

Don’t compromise on quality. I’ve seen a lot of people try to develop their businesses certainly through doing it on the cheap or trying to cut corners, and when you do that, you just end up wasting your money. Always go for quality, not just in terms of the people that you work with and the people that you bring on to your business, but just in terms of the choices that you make in your business. Make sure if you’re going to do anything, if you’re going to provide a service, make sure it’s a quality service. If you’re going to sell a product, make sure it’s a quality product. Don’t ever compromise on the things that you’re offering and don’t ever compromise on your presentation. You want to gain credibility. You want to gain trust. And by investing in your business and really investing in what’s going on around you, then in your personal development you will be able to fast track it much quicker than if you were trying to cut corners and do things on the cheap. There is no quick and easy.

David

And on the other side, is there something like your number one tip for what has helped you very much? Because you might be saying, “Well, basically it’s the overall picture of things I have done correctly.” And you said that there’s no such thing as a quick and easy success. But maybe there is something where you say, “Okay, this is definitely something that has helped me tremendously.”

Michelle

I put it all in balancing and probably unnecessarily. And this is another thing. Although I was spending 14 hours a day sort of learning all these systems and all this technology. What I didn’t have at all back then and I never really did at all throughout the whole industry is have a mentor or somebody who had been there and done it and done what I have done or was trying to do and could actually help me and guide me and point me in the right direction. So I think if you want to fast track it as much as you possibly can, invest or follow or read blogs or do something from people who have already done what you’re trying to do. See if you can take tips from them, replicate them.

A mentor, I think, these days is priceless. I didn’t have one. I think that’s why it took me so long to develop my business and get off the ground and get it to where I really wanted it to be. But not just from a financial sense, because it was pretty much looking out and taking care of me from day one, because of the way I was and the way I set it up and how hard I worked. But if I had somebody who had already done it and was able to tell me or help me or someone I could go to, to ask questions like, “I’m thinking of doing this in my business. What do you think?” I think it would have been a lot easier. And I was pretty much going it alone for a long time which I suppose was good in a sense, because I learned a lot of things through trial and error. But I also lost a lot of money that way as well. So invest in self-development, in learning from people who are achieving what you would like to achieve.

David

That’s why, of course, we are very thankful – and when I say “we” I mean the friends of 4-Hour Workweek book and philosophy who are trying to set up their own business – we are very thankful for people like you who we know would spend an hour of their day having an interview like this. This interview can already be sort of a mini mentor maybe for some. And for others who are interested in getting really hardcore mentoring, spending money and time for mentoring, you did mention about personal training and consulting. Would you consider yourself as a mentor for other people?

Michelle

Yeah, absolutely. Certainly for anybody who is looking to have a more independent kind of lifestyle, a freedom lifestyle. Certainly anybody who is looking to travel, especially with a family which is not that common these days, to find traveling families. But somebody who really would like to make money in the online service industry the right way about going about it. Yeah, I’m kind of a nice person, I think. If they go on Twitter or Facebook or something like that and say, “Hi,” that’s fine.

But, yes, I’m very much into the mentorship now, especially since I created this business program which is not like any other business program out there. It is my business model, start to finish, from everything I did right, the systems, the processes I now use in my business and everything that took it to the point where I was able to then back away and do my own projects, work on my own stuff, spend more time with my family. I really wanted to give something back. So the business program is very much a mentorship, coaching thing as well as a lot of practical information and training. And not only that, we also built the business, because when I was starting out, one of the biggest issues for me was that I needed to spend a year learning Dreamweaver which is a real pain in the neck. And I didn’t at that time really have money to invest in a web developer to be doing those changes to my site and everything, so all my business program, myself and my team, my wonderful tech team and admin team and creative team, we built the business for you as well. So it’s another way to kind of shortcut all the technical stuff and not have to learn it all yourself.

David

Great. So for everybody who listens to you and thinks, “Michelle has definitely covered things that I can learn,” and wants to make use of that, what’s the best place where they can reach you?

Michelle

The best address is probably my blog, www.virtualassistant-live.com. If you want to check out my VA company, it is www.virtualmissfriday.co.uk or www.virtualmissfriday.com. The training, the business program where we help you take your business for an online service provider company is the VA Apprentice, and my membership site where it’s very cool, it’s very fun. You learn a lot of stuff in there as well, it’s the VA Passport.

David

Okay, great. I really enjoyed the interview, Michelle, and I have no doubt that the people would be interested in checking out your sites some more and seeing if maybe you can also help them and maybe speed up their process to success. Although, as you said, there might be a fast track to success, but no really overnight success stories.

Michelle

Yeah.

David

Okay, bye-bye.

Michelle

Bye.

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